Canada — Canadian officials on Sunday showed some optimism for the first time that they were beginning to get on top of the country’s biggest wildfire, as cooler weather and light rain stopped the blaze from growing as much as feared and winds took the flames away from oil sands boomtown Fort McMurray.

“It definitely is a positive point for us, for sure,” said Alberta fire official Chad Morrison in a news briefing, when asked if the fight to contain the flames had a reached a turning point.

“We’re obviously very happy that we’ve held the fire better than expected,” said Morrison. “This is great firefighting weather, we can really get in here and get a handle on this fire, and really get a death grip on it.”

The wildfire scorching through Canada’s oil sands region in northeast Alberta had been expected to double in size on Sunday, threatening the neighboring province of Saskatchewan, as it moved into its seventh day.

But favorable weather helped hold it back, giving officials hope that they can soon begin assessing the damage to Fort McMurray, close to where the fire started, causing its 88,000 inhabitants to flee.

“As more and more fire has burned out around the city and the fuel around the city starts to disappear … we are starting to move into that second phase of securing the site and assessing the site,” said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, during the same media briefing.

Officials said it was too early to put a timeline on getting people back into the town safely.

The broader wildfire, moving southeast through wooded areas away from the town, would still take a long time to “clean up,” Morrison cautioned. Officials had previously warned that the fire could burn for months.

An Alberta government statement issued on Saturday night said the fire had consumed 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres)  an area the size of Mexico City  and would continue to grow.

Fort McMurray is the center of Canada’s oil sands region. About half of the crude output from the sands, or one million barrels per day, had been taken offline as of Friday, according to a Reuters estimate.

The inferno looks set to become the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history. One analyst estimated insurance losses could exceed C$9 billion ($7 billion).

Officials said on Sunday the fire had done minor damage at CNOOC unit Nexen’s Long Lake facility, in the site’s yard. It was the first reported damage to an energy industry asset since the crisis began.

Morrison said the fire was southwest of a Suncor Energy Inc facility, which Suncor identified as its base oil sands mining site north of Fort McMurray, and also near an unidentified Syncrude facility.

Air tankers, helicopters and bulldozers had kept the fire from reaching those sites, said Morrison: Well see how the day goes, but with the cooler weather, I do expect to hold the fire there.”

Fort McMurray still off-limits

Even though the fire has largely pushed through Fort McMurray, the town is still too dangerous to enter.

Thousands of evacuees are camped out in nearby towns but stand little chance of returning soon, even if their homes are intact. The city’s gas has been turned off, its power grid is damaged, and the water is undrinkable.

Provincial officials said displaced people would be better off driving to cities such as Calgary, 655 km (410 miles) to the south, where health and social services were better.

The provincial government has promised evacuees pre-paid debit cards to cover immediate costs, with C$1,250 per adult and C$500 per dependent, expected to cost about C$100 million.

After the scare of her life escaping the fire on Tuesday, housekeeping supervisor Susie Demelo got some welcome good news on Saturday. New satellite images showed the house she rents in Fort McMurray was still standing.

Demelo and her partner had no insurance on their belongings.

“I’m very blessed and grateful,” she said. “And nobody has died in the fire.”

Through Friday and Saturday, police escorted thousands of evacuees who had been forced to flee north from Fort McMurray back through the burning town, to allow them to head south to Alberta’s major cities. By Sunday morning, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman said that process was complete.

Some residents were complaining about the lack of news from the town, fire chief Darby Allen said in a video posted online late on Saturday.

“We know from all the calls that you’re getting frustrated because you don’t have any information on your homes. We’re really working hard on that, it’s a complicated process,” he said.

More than 500 firefighters were in and around Fort McMurray, along with 15 helicopters, 14 air tankers and 88 other pieces of equipment, officials said.

Canada — With patches of lawn on fire in the front yards of his neighbourhoods suburban homes and flames rising up the trees at the back, Jared Sabovitch frantically got into his car and began driving away from his home in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the Canadian city recently overtaken by wildfires.

Hasty exit, he said as he drove, the phone in his hand recording a video he would later post to Instagram. That might have been the last time I ever saw my house, right there.

Sabovitch fled along with roughly 90,000 other residents, making this the largest evacuation on record in Canada. Red smoke and flames filled the sky behind him as he drove away.

The wildfire has now burned more than half a million acres, and continues to spread. Most of Fort McMurray was spared destruction, but 2,400 homes fell to the fire, Sabovitchs included.

That a wildfire would roll through this northern, boreal forest-shrouded oil boomtown was not inevitable, but it was not surprising either. When you look at satellite images of Fort McMurray from before and after the fire, you can see that because of the urbanisation that went on there, the city has encroached into the surrounding forestland, says Heiko Balzter, director of the Centre for Landscape and Climate Research at the University of Leicester.

Where there are forests, there are fires. In 1950, this same part of Canada was engulfed in a wildfire that burned for five months straight, putting nearly 4 million acres of forest up in smoke. So this fire is not even huge by historic standards, says Stephen J Pyne, a fire expert and professor at Arizona State University. The reason its significant is that, unlike 1950, theres a relatively modern community right in the middle of it.

Theres no definitive list of the worlds most fire-prone cities, mostly because of the many and often compounding factors that can increase the likelihood of fires. As well as the growing vulnerability caused by climate change and poor urban management, other factors range from the prevalence of dry vegetation and use of flammable building materials to widespread open-flame cooking and, all too frequently, arson.

But there is one relatively straightforward indicator of fire risk that can be tracked and mapped. Its what researchers and foresters call the wildland-urban interface: areas where naturally fire-prone wilderness areas such as forests and shrublands are close to, or even intermingled with, housing developments, neighbourhoods or even  as in the case of Fort McMurray  entire cities.

The US Forest Service recently released a detailed report and map of the countrys wildland-urban interfaces, made by comparing satellite imagery with housing and population data from the US Census. In total, about one-third of its houses and population are in a wildland-urban interface zone, according to the reports lead author, Sebastian Martinuzzi from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Thats a huge number, he says, attributing much of it to exurban sprawl and the desire to live close to nature in locations such as the fringes of Los Angeles, the front range of Colorado, and exurban parts of Texas and Florida. Not all of these houses and people are at risk of a fire, Martinuzzi says, but many could be given the right conditions.

For Fort McMurray, those conditions were created by the recent El Niño weather pattern, which caused much of Alberta to experience a drier-than-normal winter, then an earlier-than-normal fire season amid higher-than-normal temperatures.

In Europe, the wildland-urban interface is also widespread, according to a new map created by a team led by Heiko Balzter. He says the abandonment of agricultural areas and the encroachment of shrublands are creating swathes of unmanaged land covered with abundant fuel for fires. Coupled with the growth of densely built suburban and tourist towns  notably in Lisbon and other parts of Portugal, Provence and southern France, coastal southern Spain and throughout Greece  the risk of destructive fires in these interface zones is high.

Those areas of the Mediterranean are predicted to receive less rainfall in the future and become hotter, Balzter says. So under climate change, leaving aside the whole issue of wildland-urban interface, this whole area is under higher risk from fire anyway.

Fire has also been identified as one of the key resilience challenges in the metropolitan district of Quito, Ecuador, where seismic activity, floods and wildfires occur regularly. In 2012 alone, around 2,600 forest fires were reported there.

The interrelatedness of the wildland-urban edge and climate change is well-known in Australia, too, where extreme weather is common and its major cities are often closely surrounded by mostly rural lands. Australia has suffered a number of devastating wildfires that have impacted many developed parts of the country, including the metropolitan areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

The most recent of these major fires were the so-called Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, on the outskirts of Melbourne. Fuelled by a long drought and exceptionally high temperatures, the fires burned more than half a million acres, destroyed more than 2,000 homes, and killed 173 people on a single day. They were the worst bushfires in the countrys history, which is replete with destructive and deadly fires dating back more than 150 years.

Being in a relatively sparsely populated country, Australias fires can seem somewhat less significant than the major urban fires humanity has endured in recent centuries. The Great Fire of London in 1666 devastated the city north of the Thames, destroying more than 13,000 easily combustible timber-and-pitch homes. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed an estimated 70,000 buildings  more than half of a city where not only the homes but also many of the roads and sidewalks were built of wood. And in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, the city of San Francisco burned for four days straight, destroying most of the citys wooden buildings and killing an estimated 3,000 people.

A city built of mostly wooden structures is basically a reconstituted forest, says Pyne, and so they burn exactly like a forest  spreading quickly and easily.

These days, of course, less flammable building materials are much more widely used, better fire codes have been developed to guide building practices, and urban planners have established rules for reducing the spread of fire and easing access for robustly-equipped firefighters. As a result, cities across the developed world experience wildfires only very rarely.

If youre looking at modern cities of industrial society, it would take something like an earthquake or war to break down the system to the point where you have large urban fires, says Pyne. Outside these modern, developed cities, however, the risk of large fires rises significantly.

What youre dealing with here is two types of wildfire: theres the western fire, and theres the developing fire, says Greg Bankoff, professor of history at the University of Hull and editor of Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World.

Fire happens differently in the cities of the developing world, where pressures from urban growth are packing more people into sections of cities that are unable or unprepared to handle them during emergency situations. Informal settlements and shanty towns only increase the risk of fire, due to high population densities, a high prevalence of open flames and improvised stoves, wood- and scrap-based construction materials and a tightly packed urban footprint that allows fire to spread quickly.

Bankoff says the statistics on fires in informal settlements arent tracked well, but theyre regular and often at a scale that affects thousands of residents. A fire last month in Delhi gutted 400 huts, while more recent fires destroyed the shanties of around 70 families in Dhaka, and more than 60 families in a São Paulo favela. A major township fire in Cape Town last year burned nearly 1,000 shacks and displaced roughly 4,000 people.

I lost my entire savings, a slum dweller in south Delhi told the Deccan Herald after a fire in 2014 destroyed his home and 4,000 others. Nothing much is left, except some clothes and slippers. All our identity proofs are also gone. Another fire the summer before burned 400 homes. Death by fire in the slums is a common occurrence.

Any city with informal settlements is susceptible to large fires: Cities in India, cities in Africa, you can take your pick really, Bankoff says. Theyre all particularly fire prone.

Go beyond the informal settlements, however, and the risk of multi-building fires drops significantly. Its almost like there are two cities within a city, says Bankoff.

When people can afford flame-resistant building materials, when codes and plans guide development with fire risk in mind, when resources have been dedicated to respond to fires before they can spread, the large urban fire, spreading and displacing hundreds or even thousands, is rare if not unheard of.

The solution is really hardening the structures, changing the building patterns, altering the zoning arrangements so that the areas simply less susceptible to being hit with multiple fires like this, says Pyne. But thats a hard sell. Thats a political decision that has to be made.

For the informal city to attain the same level of fire safety as the formal city, or for the exurban dwellers of the wildland-urban interface to be as safe as those in the central city, better policies and smarter land management is needed to control what gets built where, how its built, and when the line between city and wilderness should be drawn firm.

Unless development happens in a way that better recognises and plans around the risk of fire, some cities will continue to burn  with devastating consequences.

Vellamunda: With summer peaking, the grasslands and shola forests of the Banasura Hills have come under the threat of forest fires. The fires that have become a routine event in the recent years and has been burning down priceless reserves of biodiversity year after year. Forest fires erupt in the months of March and within days burn down the forest into cinders.

The routine fires have returned undeterred by the fire lines established by the Forest Department. More than often it is the forest brigands who set the grasslands on fire. Soon the fire engulfs the dry grass and leaps to the shola forests strengthened by the strong winds. The damage multiplies as the huge old trees catch fire.

The Banasura Hills were a reserve of the famed ‘Kaattukurunji’ flowers and many other exotic flora and fauna. These species have all but disappeared now following the natural and man made interventions. The forest streams are drying up with the advent of summer and the people in the valleys are left scrambling for water.

The undergrowth of the forest has disappeared in recent times resulting in runoff and rainwater drainage to the valleys. The absence of water retention and percolation has resulted in the streams drying up and has made them seasonal.

Crores of rupees go wasted as the saplings planted under the Social Forestry Scheme dry up in summers every year. Despite the efforts of the department, the saplings either burn down in the forest fire or dry up in the parched summer. The death of the grasslands have also contributed to the damage by exposing the top soil to erosion and runoff.

Wayanad is highly dependent on these hills for its weather balance. It is the Banasura hills that stop the winds that come past the Western Ghats and ensure rainfall upto 1600 mm in the hills of Wayanad.

Rampant forest fires and forest brigandary have turned the great mountains into dry parched patches.

Landslides and mining mafias are added challenges. There has been no concerted plan to protect Bansura Hills so far. The forest protection councils are helpless in front of the massive forest fires and no environmental groups have taken up the cause either.

Tara Singh Sob, 76, of Silgadi feels very strange these days. He had never seen such view of nature ever before. Heavy haze throughout the day in the month of May is what he is finding quite surprising. “Mist was seen in winter morning and evenings. But seeing such mist-like haze during summer is strange, I have never seen this before,” he said.

This year, almost all parts of Doti district are experiencing such uncommon weather. Locals are finding it difficult to carry out their daily activities due to insufficient light even during the day. “It’s very dark all the time. We see sunlight only for a while in day,” said Khadak Bikram Shahi, a businessman from Dipayal. “Though the weather is very hot all the time, we haven’t seen the sun properly for a week now,” he added.

Locals feel that that haze has been due to the recent surge in forest fires in and around the district. Forest fires have been catching up in the region – in the mountain and adjacent Tarai districts. “Perhaps it’s due to smoke released from the forest fires in our and surrounding districts, Narendra Khadka, president of local branch of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI) said. “Fire has destroyed most of the forests in the district. You can see literally every forest in the district has been engulfed by fire. It seems that the smoke released from these fires have clouded the atmosphere here,” he said.

The haze has taken toll on public health as well. Locals have been complaining of respiratory problems, headache, irritation in eyes and various skin related problems. Suraj Baldar, assistant doctor at the eye clinic of the District Hospital, informed that numbers of patients visiting the facility has been increasing. “Though we used to see surge in the number of eye patients at this time of the year, this time their number has been quite high, ” he said adding, “The quality of the air has degraded.”

Similarly, Harish Shah, public health monitor at facility pointed that there has been surge in the number of people complaining of respiratory problems. “Even when people are simply sitting or taking rest, they are sneezing time and again. Many find it difficult to breathe,” he said. “Such problem is seen even more in motorcyclists.”

Meanwhile, Min Kumar Aryal, meteorologist in the district said that such atmosphere has been prevalent in most part of the country. “This is not an issue that Doti alone is facing. Other districts are also facing similar circumstances. Forest fire in the western side of the district has worsened air quality here,” he said.

He claims that the haze would subside if it would rain. “Pollution levels in the atmosphere would drop down significantly if it would rain. Normally at this time of year, the district should receive pre-monsoon rain fall. But this year, it has not rained so far. This has escalated pollutant levels in the atmosphere,” he explained. – See more at: http://www.myrepublica.com/society/story/41602/forest-fire-haze-robs-doti-of-sunlight.html#sthash.yqBwgZho.dpuf

Canada — A warming trend this week is putting firefighters on edge in northern Alberta.

“What we’re seeing is temperatures rising to 23 C and the air moisture dropping to 15 per cent, and this in wild land firefighting is called a crossover,” said Barry Shellian, wildfire information officer with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.

“When this happens, we see an increase in fire behaviour. The next few days with this weather we’re going to see the wildfire intensity increase as the forest dries.”

The Fort McMurray wildfire, still out of control and growing, showed “extreme activity” in the southern parts of the wildfire on the weekend.

“Yesterday was a very challenging day for us, probably one of our most challenging days,” Shellian said Monday. “We saw significant growth both on the south and west sides.”

Firefighters had to leave the line for safety reasons and aircraft were grounded because of the smoke, Shellian said.

The bulk of the fire, which has burned about 285,000 hectares, is moving towards the northeast and is now 10 to 12 km from the Saskatchewan border.

“The direction of the fire spread right now is mainly into the wildlands, fortunately away from most of the communities, but there may be some oil and gas facilities in the area,” Shellian said.

Lightning is expected in the area this week as well.

About 1,100 wildland firefighters, 46 helicopters and 29 air tankers  available as needed  are fighting the Fort McMurray fire.

An out-of-control wildfire burning about 10 km north of Fox Creek has forced the mandatory evacuation of 100 to 200 people living in or near Little Smoky in the Municipal District of Greenview.

USA– The number of new housing units in California declined last year for the first time since the start of the economic recovery, due mostly to wildfires that scorched more than 2,000 homes, state officials reported Monday.

Californias housing supply rose by 67,110 units last year, compared with an increase of 69,435 units in 2014. Demographers at the California Department of Finance say the number of new units would have been about equal to the year before if the destructive wildfires in Lake and Calaveras counties had not hit.

Of the new units created, just over half were multi-family dwellings like apartments and condominiums. Los Angeles, Californias largest city, saw the most growth in housing, with 12,224 new units. It was followed by San Francisco with nearly 2,900, San Jose with just over 2,000 and San Diego with about 1,750.

The housing hit came as Californias population grew to 39.1 million last year, an increase of 348,000 people, just under 1 percent.

Most of the states 482 cities saw population gains, but 44 cities shrank and one  tiny Tehama, population 431  was unchanged.

Here are some other findings from the states annual city-by-city population report:

LA HITS 4 MILLION

Los Angeles surpassed 4 million residents for the first time in the states annual estimates  4,030,904 to be exact.

More than 50,000 people moved to the nations second-largest city last year, increasing its population by 1.3 percent.

San Diego is still Californias second-largest city, adding 12,000 residents to reach just under 1.4 million. San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach, Oakland, Bakersfield and Anaheim round out the top 10.

SUBURBS AND EXURBS GROW FASTEST

Cities and counties on the outskirts of the red-hot Los Angeles and San Francisco areas are growing especially fast.

San Joaquin County, home to Stockton, grew faster than any other, up 1.3 percent to 733,000 people. The area has become increasingly popular for people fleeing astronomical San Francisco Bay Area housing prices while remaining within commuting distance.

San Joaquin was followed by Yolo, Riverside and Santa Clara counties.

The fastest-growing city was Vernon in Los Angeles County, which grew a whopping 72 percent thanks to a new housing development that brought its population to 210.

Among cities with at least 30,000 people, the fastest-growing were concentrated primarily in the Inland Empire and Orange County: Porterville, Eastvale, Lake Forest, Beaumont and Lake Elsinore.

JAILS SEE DROP

County jails saw a drop of 11.3 percent, likely due to Proposition 47 sentencing changes for drug and property crimes.

Declines in prison population caused some smaller cities to shrink, including Avenal in Kings County, Tehachapi in Kern County, Susanville in Lassen County, Crescent City in Del Norte County and California City in Kern County.

Elsewhere, correctional institutions caused unusually large population increases. They include Soledad in Monterey County, McFarland in Kern County and Blythe in Riverside County.Tara Singh Sob, 76, of Silgadi feels very strange these days. He had never seen such view of nature ever before. Heavy haze throughout the day in the month of May is what he is finding quite surprising. “Mist was seen in winter morning and evenings. But seeing such mist-like haze during summer is strange, I have never seen this before,” he said.

This year, almost all parts of Doti district are experiencing such uncommon weather. Locals are finding it difficult to carry out their daily activities due to insufficient light even during the day. “It’s very dark all the time. We see sunlight only for a while in day,” said Khadak Bikram Shahi, a businessman from Dipayal. “Though the weather is very hot all the time, we haven’t seen the sun properly for a week now,” he added.

Locals feel that that haze has been due to the recent surge in forest fires in and around the district. Forest fires have been catching up in the region – in the mountain and adjacent Tarai districts. “Perhaps it’s due to smoke released from the forest fires in our and surrounding districts, Narendra Khadka, president of local branch of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI) said. “Fire has destroyed most of the forests in the district. You can see literally every forest in the district has been engulfed by fire. It seems that the smoke released from these fires have clouded the atmosphere here,” he said.

The haze has taken toll on public health as well. Locals have been complaining of respiratory problems, headache, irritation in eyes and various skin related problems. Suraj Baldar, assistant doctor at the eye clinic of the District Hospital, informed that numbers of patients visiting the facility has been increasing. “Though we used to see surge in the number of eye patients at this time of the year, this time their number has been quite high, ” he said adding, “The quality of the air has degraded.”

Similarly, Harish Shah, public health monitor at facility pointed that there has been surge in the number of people complaining of respiratory problems. “Even when people are simply sitting or taking rest, they are sneezing time and again. Many find it difficult to breathe,” he said. “Such problem is seen even more in motorcyclists.”

Meanwhile, Min Kumar Aryal, meteorologist in the district said that such atmosphere has been prevalent in most part of the country. “This is not an issue that Doti alone is facing. Other districts are also facing similar circumstances. Forest fire in the western side of the district has worsened air quality here,” he said.

He claims that the haze would subside if it would rain. “Pollution levels in the atmosphere would drop down significantly if it would rain. Normally at this time of year, the district should receive pre-monsoon rain fall. But this year, it has not rained so far. This has escalated pollutant levels in the atmosphere,” he explained. – See more at: http://www.myrepublica.com/society/story/41602/forest-fire-haze-robs-doti-of-sunlight.html#sthash.yqBwgZho.dpuf

Nepal — The forest fires that broke out at different parts of Arghakhanchi in this dry season damaged property worth million of rupees, directly affecting people of 24 villages including that of Sandhikharkha Municipality.

A total of 174 houses and 90 cowsheds were completely destroyed after bushfires caught the human settlements, Assistant Chief District Officer Chiranjibi Ghimire said. The people of the villages destroyed by the forest fires lost cash, food grains and clothes. The property damage caused by wild fires is put at Rs 70 million, he said.

The District Administration Office, Arghakhanchi has started distributing relief assistance to the affected. Forest area covering some 12,831 hectares was destroyed by the fire in this dry season. A total of 144 community forests in the district were caught by the fire, according to District Forest Office Assistant Forest Officer Madan Prasad Dhungana. Dhatibang, Siddhara, Simapani, Jaluke, Adguri, Pali and Thada VDCs have been mostly affected by the incidents of forest fire.

The death toll of wild life and birds from the forest fires remains unaccounted.

It may be noted that one Makhamali BK, 32, of Dhatibang VDC lost her life in course of dousing the forest fire spread near her home. RSS

Czech Republic / Germany — Czech and German firefighters are battling a forest fire on an area of one square kilometre near Rotava, and though the terrain is accessible with difficulty, the spread of the fire has been stopped thanks to a police helicopter that is throwing down large sacks with water.

Martin Kasal, spokesman for the regional firefighters, told CTK that no one was injured.

Ten Czech and five German firefighter’ units, altogether 115 people, are on the spot.

Rotava mayor Iva Kalatova said the fire broke out on the edge of the town

Israel — YERUSHALAYIM – Residents of the town of Negohot in the southern Chevron Hills were evacuated from their homes early Sunday, after a brush fire spread rapidly in the hot and dry conditions that prevailed in Israel. The fire was started by an IDF flare, which soldiers set off early Sunday to detect suspicious activity.

The incident began at about 2 a.m. Sunday, when soldiers thought they had seen an Arab attempt to climb the security fence around the town. The soldiers set off a flare, which ignited brush outside the security fence  quickly spreading in all directions, as the ground conditions were hot and dry due to a heat wave. Eight firefighting crews and planes were dispatched to help quell the blaze, and two Palestinian Authority crews helped out as well.

Thirteen families who lived in proximity of the fire were forced to leave their homes. The residents were allowed to return home after several hours, when the fire was brought under control.

Overnight Motzoei Shabbos, security officials said they arrested 3 wanted security suspects in other areas in Yehudah and Shomron. The suspects were wanted for participating in rioting and throwing stones and firebombs that endangered Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers. Several of the suspects were also charged with belonging to Hamas. All were being questioned on their activities by security forces.

Thailand / Russia — Russia is also ready to hold a presentation and make a commercial offer for helicopters, such as Ka-32 and Mi-17 used for fire-fighting and Ansat and Ka-226 medical helicopters

Russia will hold a presentation of Be-200 amphibious aircraft in Thailand on May 24, Russian Minister of Industry Denis Manturov said on Wednesday.

“Colleagues from UAC [United Aircraft Corporation] will present Be-200 aircraft in Thailand on May 24 in cooperation with Rosoboronexport, the special exporter. I will additionally task UAC to present Tu-214 aircraft that can be used for medical purposes and Il-76 aircraft for emergencies and disaster relief. This is a cargo aircraft that can be used for various purposes,” Manturov said.

“Russia is also ready to hold a presentation and make a commercial offer for helicopters, such as Ka-32 and Mi-17 used for fire-fighting and Ansat and Ka-226 medical helicopters,” the minister added.